The last book in the New Testament, Revelation, is remarkably popular today.  Few people read Revelation itself, but millions have read a book series called Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days.  Books seven and eight in the series (The Indwelling and The Mark) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list.  The Remnant began at number one on the Times best-seller list (2002).  Roughly 65 million copies have been sold in over forty languages, though only in America has it become a publishing phenomenon.

Left Behind assumes an evangelical doctrine called "rapture."  The term nowhere appears in the Bible but is the relatively recent creation of  John Nelson Darby, an evangelical Protestant who came up with the term in the 1830s.  Popularized by Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, and books that followed, The Late Great was the best-selling nonfiction book of the nineteen-seventies.  While the Book of Revelation is not widely read, the attraction of end-of-the-world thinking remains remarkably real even in a secular age.   Dorian Lynskey's recent Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World, suggests some reasons why.  I’ll return to one of these reasons at the end. 

Rapture claims that at the end of days, all Christians will rise “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”  First Thessalonians 4:17 is an often-cited Biblical source, but its meaning is obscure. /1/  The word “rapture” never appears in the Bible.  Nor does the Book of Revelation say anything about the followers of Jesus being taken out of the world before it all goes up in flames. 

Like all apocalypses, the rapture fantasy can be dangerous.  Older readers may remember Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who stated in testimony before Congress that while it’s essential to preserve our resources for future generations, he remarked that he wasn’t sure how many future generations there would be before the Apocalypse and Christ’s subsequent return.  Casper Weinberger, then Secretary of Defense, agreed. /2/  When you think this way, everything from nuclear war to climate change becomes less significant. 

The Left Behind series loves violence.  In this respect, it is true to Revelation, the bloodiest book in the Bible.   This,  though, is not why there was so much debate over whether to include Revelation in the canon we call the Bible, a book of books.  One thing that troubled the early church leaders was that the book was too bound to what Christians call the Old Testament.  Revelation’s God was a God of power and might, with no hint of God’s willingness to become weak and vulnerable in the person of the son (2 Corinthians 12:9).  For many Christians, not Revelation, but the Gospels teach the true lesson of Christianity: non-violence and love of neighbor in the face of hatred (Matthew 22:36-40).  Barely a hint of this remains in Revelation.

An awfully strange book

Just to remind you how strange the Book of Revelation is, I’ll quote from 12:1-4.  Revelation has many such passages.  

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.

Revelation is non-stop violence.  God unleashes the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; the sun falls from the sky and destroys half the population.  Revelation is unconcerned with human violence but with the violence of God. Every calamity, such as war, famine, and natural disasters, is sent from heaven.   The seven seals are broken by Christ, the bloodied Lamb of God, unleashing a series of catastrophes.  In Revelation, the crucified Christ takes his revenge. John explicitly states that the book is all about the "wrath of God" and the "wrath of the Lamb" (6:16–17; 11:18; 14:10; 16:19; 19:15). John Dominic Crossan calls Revelation "the most relentlessly violent book in all the canonical literature of the great religions of the world." /3/

John of Patmos, no relation to the disciple, wrote Revelation about 90 CE.  Revelation means unveiling.  It was a letter directed to seven churches whose members had succumbed to a variety of temptations, such as sexual immorality and idol worship. While the book is remarkably weird to most modern readers, it would have been familiar to many of John’s contemporaries, who would have read other stories of fantastic dreams and visions.  The Book of Daniel, written around the time of the Maccabean uprising (167-160 BCE), is the most well-known of this genre.

Revelation contains more references to the Old Testament than any other book in the New Testament, around 500.  Rarely does John quote; it’s the similarity between John’s visions and those in the Books of Daniel and Ezekiel, in particular, that is striking.  See especially Daniel 7.  I’m not going to spend much time on this connection.  My interest is in the failure of Revelation to live up to the ideals of Jesus, who, in John’s account, does little more than take revenge.

How Augustine read Revelation

John's message to the seven churches is a metaphor for the eternal battle between God and Satan and how the church members cannot avoid being participants.  This is basically Augustine's interpretation, helping to make Revelation less chaotic and fantastic.  Sometimes called  "amillennialism," Augustine's interpretation is not a prediction about the endtime; it is about the battle between God and Satan now.  The 1000 years mentioned in 20:4 is, according to Augustine, not a literal 1,000 years but the time between Christ's first and second coming.  The "millennium" is the spiritual reign of Christ rather than a physical one on earth. /4/  Revelation encourages the faithful to fight on the side of God against the corrupt power of the state and the economy, a reading that does not seem wrong but takes a good deal of creativity.

Super-short summary

Chapters 4-8.  The first scene is God in his throne room with a scroll sealed with seven seals.  Only the bloodied lamb, the crucified Christ, can open them.  The opened seals reveal the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Subsequent seals reveal an earthquake, and the stars fall to earth. 

Chapters 8-11.  Seven trumpets sound, each signifying a catastrophic event. Four angels kill a third of mankind, and magical horses kill a third more.

Chapters 12-14.  But the nations do not repent, even in the face of the two beasts, the second of which has the famous number 666 (or 616), a number that represents Nero.  Only when the church imitates Christ's sacrifice is the beast defeated, as two (or more) members lay down their lives before the beast. 

Chapters 15-16 describe the seven bowls of God’s wrath.  The second bowl turns the sea into blood, killing everything in it.  The sixth allows the kings of the East to gather for the final battle on a plain in Northern Israel called Armageddon.  It is a metaphor for God’s battle against evil (gog from Ezekiel, c. 38, where so much of Revelation comes from).

Chapters 17-20.  Still, the people do not repent.  John has a vision of a “great prostitute” called Babylon, who is seated on a beast (a powerful political entity).  Jesus appears on a white horse, and in place of his tongue is a sword (19:15).  The ultimate destruction of this wicked world system is the theme, followed by the binding of Satan, the thousand-year reign of Christ (Millennium), and the final judgment of evil at the end of the world.

Chapters 21-22.  John sees a new heaven and a new earth.  God will dwell with man on earth, where he will “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death.” (21:4)

The symbols of this fantastic vision would have been clear to many of John’s first readers.  He was depicting the military and economic power of the Roman Empire.  Rome is simply the latest version of humanity in rebellion against God.  Nations that exalt their own economic and military security to divine status aren’t limited to the past or the future. Babylons will come and go, leading up to the day when Jesus returns to replace them all with his Kingdom.

How did Revelation make it into the Bible?

By the time of the Council of Nicea (324-337 CE), Rome was no longer a threat.   Constantine had made Christianity the official religion of the empire.  What need was there for Revelation?  In a move not unfamiliar in history, the enemy without (Rome) became the enemy within the faith.  The whore of Babylon became Christians holding other beliefs, above all Arians, followers of Arius.  The issue of the status of Jesus divided Christians.  Was Christ entirely God as well as fully man, and what would that mean?  The Greek term was homoousios (ὁμοούσιος), “essentially the same” as God.  On the contrary, Arius held that Jesus was the son of God and subordinate to him.  Leading the fight against Arianism, Athanasius interpreted the whore of Babylon, who consumes human blood, no longer as Rome but rather as the Arian heresy itself.  Constantine had been right to promote the council at Nicea as uniquely valid since he said there that “all the fathers” had supported the true faith against the “Antichristian heresy.”

Athanasius interpreted John’s Book of Revelation as condemning all “heretics” and then made this book the culmination of the New Testament canon, where it has remained ever since. At the same time, he ordered Christians to stop reading any other “books of revelation,” which he branded heretical and sought to destroy — with almost complete success. (Pagels, p 144)

Was there an alternative?

Pagels points to various versions of Gnosticism as alternative conclusions to the New Testament or perhaps as alternatives to the New Testament itself.  I'm not sure, but in any case, the works of the Gnostics are no more continuous with the New Testament, above all the Gospels, than Revelation.  Various Gnostic gospels, such as Treatise on the Resurrection, or Letter to Rheginos, taught that the resurrection of Jesus Christ "was not a physical reality, but a transformation of consciousness in the believer, a transition to a newness with God."  This newness represents a unity with God, God in me, me in God.  This isn't the Gospels.  The Gnostic Anthony held that no doctrine was needed. /5/  Many Nag Hammadi texts seek spiritual union with God; God is within us all.  This union does not reflect orthodox Christianity.  John's Book of Revelation, for all its flaws, is clear that Christianity teaches the separateness of God.

The Real Problem with John’s Book of Revelation

The Gospels teach the power of poverty.  Instead of God conquering our enemies, the Gospels tell the story of God allowing himself to be tortured to death so that he might experience human pain, teach us how to live, and so give us eternal life (John 3:16; 5:24; Matthew 19:29; 25:46).  But Jesus’ teachings are not just about belief. They are about action.

For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was naked, and you gave me clothing; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me. (Matthew 25: 35-36)

Nothing of this teaching remains in the Book of Revelation.  For this reason, Martin Luther could find no value in it.

My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it . . . . Therefore I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely. /6/

To be sure, Christ's teaching about love and care for all humanity comes with eternal punishment for those who don't (Matthew 25: 40-46).  Nevertheless, the tone of the Gospels is primarily one of love and care for those in need, taught by a God-man who gave his life to save humanity.  Revelation, on the other hand, is about a mighty God who will destroy Christ's enemies in one final battle, returning to earth to establish his Kingdom in power and glory.  The tone and the lesson are entirely different.  In John's Revelation, the bloodied lamb takes his revenge.  In Christ, there is no revenge.

The reality of symbolism

The Book of Revelation is symbolic. Jesus is not going to kill babies, torture almost everyone on earth, and then execute them in the most horrifying way one can imagine. The book is a metaphor about how God will restore justice, destroy evil, and make the world good again, a paradise for those who are faithful (Ehrman, p 166).

John uses symbolism to convey a message of hope to those who feel persecuted.  In the end, God will triumph, destroying evil.  But why, asks Ehrman, does John tell this story in such incredibly violent and gory terms?  Symbols reveal an author's deepest values, commitments, and beliefs.  As Pieter de Villiers puts it,

This is language that soaks the imagination of readers in violence….It is language that draws its listeners into an atmosphere of bitter and agonistic opposition against others and that categorizes people in terms of either good or evil with dangerous consequences. /7/

John understands God as a God of wrath.  Love is absent.  To be sure, John says that Christ “loves us,” “freeing us from our sins by his blood” (1:5), but John does not say a word about God loving anyone or anything. God is a God of wrath, determined to wreak vengeance through catastrophes and torments sent from heaven (Ehrman, p 167).

D. H. Lawrence, or Nietzsche's Last Man

Lawrence’s last book was Apocalypse, a study of the book of Revelation.  Lawrence hated the book.  Though he never mentions Nietzsche, Lawrence’s analysis sees John’s Revelation as a version of Nietzsche’s “last man,” filled with suppressed envy. /8/  Revelation is driven not by the sacrificial love of Jesus but by envy of Roman power.  God will use brutal force to give Christians what the Romans had: the power and wealth of empire.  With that, they would rule the world, as Rome had done.

For decades, Ehrman read Revelation as a story of hope. Written for Christians who were ruthlessly oppressed and persecuted, Revelation was meant to show them that, in the end, justice would be done, good would triumph, God would overcome the miseries of this world, and his followers would be rewarded for their faithfulness (Ehrman, 170).
But how will they be rewarded? God will destroy every other man, woman, and child on earth, no matter their goodness to the poor and oppressed, so that the faithful followers of Jesus, those who believe in a particular doctrine, can have all the wealth and power in the world (Ehrman, p 172).  Revelation is less concerned with hope for the future than it is with hope that the powerful will suffer forever.  That’s Nietzsche’s account of Christian envy, not Christ’s.  It’s an account that sees wealth and domination as ultimate goods.

Conclusion

So, how might the Bible have ended?  As it properly does with the Letters of John 1-3, especially 1 John.  These are the Books that immediately precede Revelation.  The perspective is that of the Gospel of John.  In John 1, Jesus is coextensive with God.  It’s not a great book, and while likely not written by the same John who wrote the Gospel, it nonetheless lays out the basic principles of Johanian Christianity while admonishing those who would disbelieve. That’s all that is needed.  The Letter of James adds the need to act as a Christian, not just believe or worship like one.  But the Letter of John 1 is a nice summary. /9/  By the time of the last of the seven uncontested letters of Paul (Philemon), the New Testament has long since done Its work.

End times thinking today

Though he never puts it quite this way, Arthur Krystal, in an article in The New Yorker, suggests that there is something comforting about end-times thinking, especially for those with no religious beliefs and so no belief in a new world without tears. /10/  For some, a defined end is better than the chaos and confusion we seem destined to live with.  For others, the end is situated in a cosmic context, in which we know as certainly as science knows anything that the world will end in about a billion years, when the sun becomes so hot it will destroy all life on earth. 

A billion years is a long time, but that's the point.  It puts life on earth in perspective, a tiny dot in an almost endless series of galaxies, whose continued existence (or non-existence) is insignificant in a cosmic framework.  Such an ambitious cosmic framework is another perspective, no more true than the stories in the Bible, in which we live as the children of God, judged by whether we treat each other with love.  One could say they are incommensurable, but something about end-times thinking, old or new, is hostile to thinking in human terms, the terms of living each day with love and care for our fellow humans.  Doing so is mundane, ordinary and this-worldly, which is exactly how humans are meant to live.

Notes & References

C. Fred Alford is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he taught ancient and medieval political philosophy for thirty-eight years. He has written eighteen books on diverse subjects: psychoanalysis and politics, natural law, trauma theory, and the legacy of the Holocaust. While not a professional theologian, Alford wrote a book on Emmanuel Levinas, one on natural law, and still another addressing the book of Job.

ESSAYS

BY C. FRED ALFORD